This invention relates to an electromagnetic relay as well as to a process for adjusting a response voltage of the electromagnetic relay. Such a relay is disclosed in German Patent Document DE 42 43 852 wherein a process for adjusting a response voltage for a relay as is also disclosed in German Patent Document DE 42 43 854 is set forth.
In this relay, a switching contact spring has a spring coupling element which is shoved, by means an adjusting stamp, onto a portion of a terminal tongue until a relay armature is attracted, with a predetermined attraction voltage being applied. If this is successful, the coupling element is affixed to this portion of the terminal tongue by laser welding.
In this manner, a mounting step and an adjusting step are carried out at the same fabrication station, whereby, in a beneficial manner, one costly apparatus can be avoided; however, the apparatus for this combined mounting and adjusting step is in itself similarly expensive.
Under certain circumstances, however, it can also be convenient for the mounting and adjusting steps to be carried out one after the other; such as when large numbers of such relays must be fabricated and, accordingly, the fabrication cycle time must be quite small.
In this case, the mounting and adjusting will indeed require two apparatus instead of one, whereby, however, each of these apparatus can be of a less complicated structure than a known combined apparatus. The piece, or cycle, times are, however, significantly smaller, because the relatively time-intensive combined mounting and adjusting step is eliminated and is replaced by two extremely fast single steps carried out in series.
A process is previously disclosed in German Patent publication DE 32 35 714 A1 in which a response voltage of an already mounted relay can be adjusted. Here, it is suggested to deform relay components which can be deformed in a selective manner by means of local warming; that is, mainly, to deform a contact spring by means of a laser beam.
This process is quite expensive because not only is an expensive laser installation necessary but also a precisely functioning optical beaming device to control the laser beam; and, in order to control this aiming device an algorithmic correlation between an illuminated point, an illumination time period and a desired deformation for adjusting the component, must be exactly known.
Further, this laser adjustment produces a material deformity exactly at points on the contact spring that will be significantly loaded later during operation of the relay. Thus, this process can lead to a reduction in the lifetime and/or the reliability of a relay adjusted in this manner.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a relay which does not have the above mentioned disadvantages, that is uncomplicated and cost effective to mount and whose response voltage can also be adjusted in an uncomplicated and cost effective manner when already mounted.